Frankl’s search for meaning

By any measure, Viktor Frankl was a remarkable human being. A neurologist and psychologist by training, he was also a Holocaust survivor of four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He lost his mother and brother to the gas chambers and his first wife to typhus contracted in Bergen-Belsen. After the war, he rose to prominence as a philosopher and psychotherapist, founding the school of logotherapy, a method of helping people find meaning in life. Given the amount of personal tragedy he experienced at the hands of the Nazis, his resilience and refusal to indulge in self-pity mark him out as an impressive example for an age like ours, where words like “trauma” have been devalued beyond usefulness.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Embracing Hope (Beacon Press, 160 pp.) offers a brief but compelling collection of two lectures, an interview, and an article that capture the central premises and concerns of his work. Frankl’s organizing insight was that human beings crave meaning. This is indisputable and lies at the heart of the existential challenge of modernity. As a society we have rejected the old ways of finding meaning, most obviously those provided by religious belief and ritual, and have struggled to find anything to fulfill the same purpose. Frankl called this the “existential vacuum” and saw it as responsible for strange pathologies. Thus, in the interview from 1977 published here, he laments the tragic rise in suicides in the West, particularly among young people, commenting that the rate of such was oddly much lower in Auschwitz and Dachau—something he argued proves that suicide is not a function of stress but rather of something deeper: lack of meaning. His conclusion is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s comment that it is not suffering that we find unbearable, but meaningless suffering.

Frankl is surely right in seeing human beings as those who seek meaning. Less satisfactory, however, is his answer as to where meaning is to be found: entirely in the immanent sphere. He is not wholly wrong. He proposes three avenues by which life can be given meaning: work; love; and experience of something such as nature, art, or culture. He also sees the memory of these things as giving life shape and ultimate purpose even as it draws to a close. These are indeed rich and important aspects of being human. We are creatures made for work, as anyone forcibly deprived of work can attest. We are creatures built to exist in relationships, and loving relationships are surely the most rewarding. And those excessive aspects of human existence—beauty, for example—enrich our lives in many ways.

The problem is that each of these things, detached from any objective sacred order, seems to gain its value from a form of utilitarianism. Work, love, and art are all good because they give a sense of meaning to our lives. But the big question is this: Is that meaning simply a subjective response? Are they just forms of therapy that make us feel better, or do they have an objective significance that correlates to the intrinsic shape of human nature? What if I find meaning in acts of destruction or evil? Frankl talks at several points about “decency” and “dignity,” and these are surely important aspects of what it means to be human. But can Frankl justify these terms or give them objective content that is grounded in something beyond his own intuitive tastes?

This is where the Christian will likely find Frankl both helpful and lacking. He is helpful for sure in the way he identifies perhaps the most important characteristic of our modern malaise: the widespread experience of lack of meaning. He is also helpful in seeing human beings as those who crave meaning and thus find themselves by turns depressed, frustrated, and angry with the modern “existential vacuum.”

He is lacking, however, in his focus on the issue of meaning rather than truth. Human beings do seek meaning, but they do so because they are creatures who have a given end and existential structure and inhabit a universe of which these things are also true. We are not made merely to seek any meaning that gives shape to our lives, but truth that gives a very specific shape to our lives. To echo the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we are to glorify God here on earth with the end of enjoying Him forever. Without the categories of creation, fall, and redemption, Frankl cannot ultimately make sense of, or offer a substantial solution to, the problems he so perceptively identifies.

This major criticism should not, however, discourage people from reading Frankl. While his analysis of the human condition falls short, it is nonetheless quite remarkable, serving as a reminder that the problems we face today have been around for many decades. And, like all good thinkers, he makes his readers think and challenges them to provide better answers to the questions he sees our world asking.